Jasmine Nichole Cobb

Bacca Foundation Associate Professor

Jasmine Nichole Cobb is the Bacca Foundation Associate Professor of African & African American Studies and of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University. She earned a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and, most recently, an American Fellowship from the American Association of University Women.

Her first book, Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century (NYUP 2015), traces the emergence of Black freedom as both an idea and as an image during the early nineteenth century. Through an analysis of popular culture of the period—including amateur portraits, racial caricatures, joke books, antislavery newspapers, abolitionist materials, runaway advertisements, ladies’ magazines, and scrapbooks, as well as scenic wallpaper—Cobb explores the earliest illustrations of free Blacks and reveals the complicated route through visual culture toward a vision of African American citizenship. Presently, she is editor of African American Literature in Transition, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, forthcoming), on black literature produced between 1800 and 1830 and the array of cultural, technological and political transitions associated with these works. She is also at work on a second monograph, New Growth: Black Women, Hair and Late Capitalism, which evaluates contemporary ideas about black freedom in art and print culture through the lens of black hair.

Some information on this profile has been compiled automatically from
Duke databases and external sources. (Our
About page explains how this works.)
If you see a problem with the information, please write to
Scholars@Duke and let us know. We will
reply promptly.